John Boehner ‘dismayed’ on Iraq response

House Speaker John Boehner on Friday called U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants “appropriate,” but criticized the White House for being disengaged on the Iraq issue.

“The president’s authorization of airstrikes is appropriate,” the Ohio Republican said in a statement, “but like many Americans, I am dismayed by the ongoing absence of a strategy for countering the grave threat ISIS poses to the region,” he said, in reference to an alternative name for ISIL.

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“Vital national interests are at stake, yet the White House has remained disengaged despite warnings from Iraqi leaders, Congress, and even members of its own administration,” he added.

Boehner said he would be willing to work with President Barack Obama if he outlined a “long-term strategy” that for Iraq with a clearly defined mission. He concluded by wishing good luck to the military personnel carrying out the airstrikes.

The Pentagon on Friday morning announced airstrikes against ISIL targets, saying that two F/A-18 Hornet fighters attacked a mobile howitzer that was targeting Kurdish forces in the capital of Erbil. The Defense Department notice came after President Barack Obama announced that he would authorize “targeted airstrikes” against ISIL targets in northern Iraq and provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in the region.

The House speaker has been harshly critical of Obama on Iraq policy in recent months, as ISIL militants have swept across much of the northern and central part of the country. In June, he accused the president of “taking a nap” as militants neared the Iraq capital of Baghdad and slammed him for inaction.

“The president has been watching, well we’ve been watching for over a year as the situation in Iraq continued to be undermined. Yet nothing, nothing, has happened,” he said, accusing the president of not having a cogent strategy.

Obama pulled out all combat forces in Iraq in 2011. In his announcement on Thursday, the president cautioned that he would “not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq.”